Gizem Gültekin Várkonyi: Technical and Legal Interoperability of Social Robots and the GDPR

More personal data means more personal services at today’s data driven market that does not seem to change much in close future. Embodied and connected AI technologies gain and drain much of personal data made available by human. A futuristic approach for robotic applications points that robots at personal use might become real within this century. General purpose robot assisting person’s daily life activities is demanded and supported with scientific developments which are supported with huge investments. Social robot, a type of service robot, could interact with human in a humanoid way and is indeed able to collect personal data to personalize its services which are currently delivered in healthcare and entertainment sectors at a limited level. However, living with such artificial-social personas raise some concerns regarding protection of human’s private life. Even the most updated personal data protection law, the GDPR, may fall short to ensure full protection of a social robot user’s personal data both because of the technical realities and of the legal constraints. The fact is that, these robots are able to persuade human to disclose even more personal data, thanks to, for example, their physical presence, emotional interaction abilities, and ability to learn from actual data (e.g. via Reinforcement Learning) . In this talk, I will present how the GDPR is challenged by the current developments in the AI field, and how single interpretation of some of the GDPR rules could be difficult in connection with those developments.